This week’s Time Capsule looks at Lockheed, liquor sales, Joe Mack Wilson, KSU and the Olympics.

100 years ago …

In Friday, April 24, 1914 edition of the Marietta Journal and Courier, the front page reported the death of Egbert Barrows Freyer who was “one of the most prominent and popular men in Marietta and one of the city’s best citizens.” Freyer was a partner in the McNeel Marble Co. and a vestry-man of St. James Episcopal Church. He was the designer of monuments for his firm and “had no superior in such work in the South.”

Another front page story reported the death of J.B. Delk who had been seriously injured after getting caught in the shafting of his mill a month earlier.

50 years ago …

A crew door, located in the forward portion of a Lockheed C-141, was reported in the Sunday, April 19, 1964 Marietta Daily Journal as having fallen off during a test flight. The door came off about 20 miles west of Marietta. There was no damage reported to the plane or injuries to the crew. Lockheed was seeking to retrieve the door so engineers could determine why it fell off.

Officials of the Sabin Oral Sunday drive were reported in the Monday, April 20, 1964 paper as having expressed disappointment over the turnout for the third and final dose of Sabin Oral Vaccine, an anti-polio vaccination. Totals from the 12 schools dispensing the vaccine listed 50,846 doses were administered. This was roughly half of the number that turned out for the first dosage in February.

In the Tuesday, April 21, 1964 paper it was reported that package liquor sales, long outlawed in Cobb County, were expected to be voted upon on May 6. Ordinary Garvis Sams said the referendum was called after petitions bearing almost 13,000 names were delivered to his office. The last liquor election in Cobb at the time had been March 12, 1958.

Also that day, it was reported that one of Lockheed Georgia’s JetStars would take off from a Newark, N.J. runway on a 3,900-mile flight to Germany’s famous Hanover Air Show. In approximately 500-minutes of flying time, the nine-miles-a-minute “Time Machine” was expected to reach its destination. Pilots Dick Shieber and Warren Lee with Flight Engineer F.A. Decuper comprised the crew. The plane was entered into the show to demonstrate to European business leaders the JetStar’s capabilities.

A Canton man was reported in the Wednesday, April 22, 1964 paper as being fatally injured after falling from near the top of the Lockheed manufacturing building. An electrical helper, the man plunged almost 40 feet from a mobile work basket. He and a co-worker were replacing fluorescent lights in the ceiling of the B-1 building when the accident happened.

Another story in that paper reported that after weeks of speculation, Joe Mack Wilson qualified for commissioner of roads and revenue in the fall elections. Arthur Bacon, a Smyrna businessman, qualified on the Wilson ticket to run for the office of deputy commissioner. Wilson, serving his second term as a Cobb representative in the state legislature, pledged himself to strive for improvements in education and mental health as well as improvements in the county road system.

In the Thursday, April 23, 1964 paper it was reported that voters voiced an over-whelming endorsement of the $2,350,000 junior college bond issue. Official tallies showed the margin of victory to be greater than the most ardent supporters of the issue had anticipated – 6,305 votes in favor to 871 votes against. Separate elections were conducted by the City of Marietta and the Cobb Board of Education. The issue carried by a 12 to 1 margin in the city and 6 to 1 in the county. The bond drive for the junior college, which would later become Kennesaw State University, was spearheaded by a county-wide steering committee. Robert D. Fowler, chairman of the group, expressed appreciation to the many organizations that supported and actively worked to get voters to the polls.

A sudden hard windstorm was reported in the Friday, April 24, 1964 paper as having struck Cobb County and killed between 1,000 and 1,500 chickens when it partially destroyed a building on the H.G. Tatum farm near Acworth. Other isolated damage was reported throughout the county.

Also that day, the Cobb Advisory Board was reported as voting to rebuild the old Sope Creek covered bridge that was destroyed by arsonists in the predawn hours of Easter Sunday. Commissioner Herbert McCollum said the project would cost between $20,000 and $25,000, while a regular bridge would cost $40,000 to $50,000.

20 years ago …

In the Tuesday, April 19, 1994 Marietta Daily Journal it was reported that a group of gay-rights activists trying to drive Olympic volleyball from the Cobb Galleria Centre had six U.S. lawmakers, including two Georgians, supporting their cause. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., joined the club with a letter to International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch saying the venue should be changed because the commission’s anti-gay resolution makes gays unwelcome in Cobb.

A Cobb officer shot in the face in a predawn gunfight on March 30 was reported in the Wednesday, April 20, 1994 paper as being happy to return to work, but wanted to be in a patrol car instead of a desk. Norman Schur and his training officer Robert Littler were shot by a man after the two officers checked on why he had parked his car near Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. Littler was shot in the face and once in the back, while Schur was hit in the face.

Damon Poirier is the Newsroom Administrator for the Marietta Daily Journal.

If you are interested in learning more about the stories that were presented in this week’s column, you can search the newspaper’s digitized microfilm archives online. NewsBank, which hosts the archives for the Marietta Daily Journal, charges a fee for retrieved articles and has various price packages available. If you have any trouble with your username, password or payment options, please contact NewsBank at mariettadaily@newsbank.com.

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